Page 35 of Dirty Gambit

“I need a shower,” he said instead. “And a proper toilet to shit in.”

She made a face he would have found comical any other time. “You don’t get to make demands.”

“Even a prisoner of war gets a shower and a bucket to piss in.”

“I gave you a bucket,” she snapped back.

“You can’t refuse me a toilet,” he hissed in return. “Or I swear, I will shit in your backseat.”

To her credit, Lena never batted an eye. “That’s fine. You’re the one who has to sit in it.” Maybe it was the glare on his face or the logic behind his threat, but she relented with a heavy sigh and nodded. “Fine. Next stop we make, you can shower and shit. Happy?”

It was such an odd conversation that he had no idea what the proper response to that was. Thank you? Instead, he offered a grunt and dropped back ungracefully, and stared up at the shadows concealing the rafters. He heard rather than saw Lena do the same. Then there was nothing, but the pop and hiss of the fire and the rumble of rain for several minutes. He was about to think she’d gone back to sleep when he heard, “Jaxon?”

He turned his head to her shadowed silhouette. “Yeah?”

He heard her suck in a deep, stabilizing gulp of air. “If you shit in the backseat of the car, I will put you in one of Jessie’s diapers for the rest of the trip.”

It was stated so calmly, as if they were discussing the next leg of their journey and she had to express her decision to have the bagel for breakfast over the scones that, for a moment, Jaxon didn’t know how to react.

“If you want to get into my pants again, all you have to do is say so,” he countered, and immediately regretted it, because that was allhewanted and now, he had visions of that morning playing in his head in a torturous loop.

“That can’t happen again.”

The statement was said with such a soft, but firm devotion, he almost believed her.

“Can’t or won’t?” he countered quietly.

Her hesitation lasted two heartbeats before she whispered, “Can’t.”

He told himself it shouldn’t matter, that he shouldn’t even want her for obvious reasons, that having her would be the nail that sealed his coffin, but it was the thought of never having her that twisted something in the pit of his stomach. It was picturing a life where she wasn’t present.

But that leap.

How did his brain go from overlooking all the reasons he should loath her, bump aside the notion of a quick and meaningless fuck to planting her like some begonia in his future? Had he hit his head and somehow forgotten? There had to be some kind of chemical imbalance keeping him from making a logical and rational thoughts.

Yet, when his mouth opened, stupidity poured out. “Why?”

Her quiet chuckle drifted between them, void of amusement. “Do you want a list? I can’t trust you and you shouldn’t trust me.”

“What does fucking have to do with trust?” He knew it was a foolish, selfish question even before it popped out of his skull in an indignant rush.

“It should probably have everything to do with it,” she murmured. “I don’t think I trust you won’t strangle me and you can’t trust I won’t shoot you.”

He considered that a long moment, seeing her point. “We could make a pact. No killing each other five minutes before or after.”

Her laugh was a little lighter this time, but it didn’t sound like she was convinced. “Is it that important to you?”

“Being inside you?”

He hadn’t meant to vomit those words into the world, but once said, he let them hang in the suddenly heavy silence that followed. Every muscle in his body vibrated with the need for stillness, for quiet, terrified of missing her answer. Whatever came next, however, she responded … he didn’t know. He had no idea what he would do with the truth once it dropped into the damp, moldy confines of that attic. It wasn’t as if he could act. Even if he could, she was right, she had no right trusting him and she shouldn’t! She should have her guard up at all times because that meant that they both knew where they stood, they knew what to expect. He was her prisoner. His goal should be getting him and Jessie home. There should literally be nothing else. No other objective. No other distractions. He sure as hell should not be sulky because he couldn’t have her. He needed to stop. He needed to retract his question.

“Yes.”

The word could have been lost in the storm. It could have drowned in the thunder, been washed away by the rain. It could have vaporized entirely into the cosmos, yet somehow, it echoed like a bomb. It shattered into a million serrated particles that pierced through his sanity.

It was loaded.

It didn’t matter what he said, how he tried to explain, there would be no going back. Once he answered, once the truth hit the reality crackling around them … what? She would still be responsible for tearing his family apart. He would be obligated to stop her by any means necessary. Telling her he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anyone, that he physically hurt with the force of that need, changed nothing because, in the morning, she would still force him back into the car.

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